Social Marketing
Facebook – The Mainstream Platform
With over 2.5 billion active users (monthly), Facebook has come a long way since its launch all the way back in 2004. It’s very hard to find a human being today who doesn’t have a Facebook profile. This obviously means that B2B Marketing simply cannot ignore this mainstream platform. Yes, this platform is much more effective as a B2C Marketing tool, but B2B Marketing professionals have to do their thing on Facebook. You need to have an official Facebook page that is updated on a daily basis with somebody to manage comments and respond to your visitors when they as you questions.
But there are also Facebook campaigns. This mainstream platform offers a wide range of options for all budgets. With the right tactics and engaging messaging, you can soon become a force to reckon with. Thats assuming you have invested some time in learning your competition and target audience.
Twitter – The Land of the Influencers
Twitterland. A lot has been said about this social media platform. Today, anyone can “tweet” out his thoughts and get responses from people all around the world. Fortunately, it’s not just a platform for opinions. The worlds top IT professionals, mentors, and influencers are now using Twitter to educate their respective audiences. Was does it mean to you? Your organization needs to get on Twitter and engage with these personas. Once this starts happening, you will automatically unlock the door to their world, which has thousands of potential customers and professionals who can use your product/s.
LinkedIn – The Professional Channel
LinkedIn started off as the “Facebook for Professionals”. But it has come a long way since then. Following Google+’s tragic demise, thousands of professionals migrated their semi-technical groups to LinkedIn. If you are from the IT space, there are probably a few dozens of groups that your target audience frequents. A wise Social Marketing strategy involves infiltrating these spaces and posting content that talks to these professionals. For that, you will obviously need quality blog posts, whitepapers, and ebooks. But if you do manage to reach these people and engage them, you will soon be seen as a thought leader.
This professional platform also offers a comprehensive campaign management module, via which you can try to directly reach and engage the personas most relevant to your product. However, you need to make sure your content has added value and that your messaging is razor sharp.
YouTube – The Video Marketing Connection
Video is the king of content. Today’s massive smartphone usage has changed the way people consume content. They prefer watching a 30-second long video instead of reading a 800-word webpage. The same applies to social media campaigns. Make sure your YouTube channel isn’t empty.
Quora – The Technical Zone
Social Marketing is all about engaging your target audience. This means that you have to create content that can captivate the imagination of technical professionals and developers. But that’s just the first step. With proper research and planning, you can find most of them on Quora, which is fast becoming the next big platform for B2B Marketing. Not only can you engage with these “geeks” directly with well-educated question, but you can also run campaigns to push your content to the right people and gain brand recognition. Quote also offers personalised podcast and other marketing perks.
Instagram – The PR Platform
As you already know, Instagram is a social media medium based on pictures and videos. This serious limits its potential as a B2B Social Marketing tool. However, it’s always a good idea to have a corporate account on Instagram. You can look at it as your personal PR platform to showcase your offices, feature your best workers, and also share pictures from expos and conferences (once Covid-19 is behind us). There is no denying Instagram’s popularity today. With Facebook taking over this platform, using the right Hashtags and following the right personas can work wonders for your brand.